


Mistakes were made

by CamilleDuDemon



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Feelings, Injury Recovery, M/M, Masturbation, Mild Hurt/Comfort, POV Eames (Inception), Pillow Talk, Post-Canon, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 04:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16632677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CamilleDuDemon/pseuds/CamilleDuDemon
Summary: Eames gets stabbed in the ribs while helping a friend not to, well, get shot in the head by a gang of Chinese mobsters he has crafted drugs for.Arthur gets involved when a bleeding Eames shows up at his door, asking if he's got some vodka and a sewing kit.[When Eames realizes he's got bloody stabbed in the ribs, for the first time in years he thinks he's gonna die. Which is a surprisingly dark thought for someone like him.Nevertheless, he supposes that that's how he goes, stabbed in the ribs by a fucking chinese moneylender while rescuing a friend who's possibly even more reckless than him from a certain, very painful death.How generous of him, isn't it? What a bloody abnegant idiot he is.He cursed himself many, many times for being still here, in New York, even though the job he was working on has already been done at least two, three days ago, but when Manny calls, who's him to deny his oldest friend a favor?Not to mention how bloody desperate he was, while barely holding his phone in place, running around Chinatown with a couple of armed goons on his tail.]





	Mistakes were made

When Eames realizes he's got bloody stabbed in the ribs, for the first time in years he thinks he's gonna die. Which is a surprisingly dark thought for someone like him.

Nevertheless, he supposes that that's how he goes, stabbed in the ribs by a fucking chinese moneylender while rescuing a friend who's possibly even more reckless than him from a certain, very painful death. 

_ How generous of him, isn't it? What a bloody abnegant idiot he is. _

He cursed himself many, many times for being still here, in New York, even though the job he was working on has already been done at least two, three days ago, but when Manny calls, who's him to deny his oldest friend a favor?

Not to mention how bloody desperate he was, while barely holding his phone in place, running around Chinatown with a couple of armed goons on his tail.

“You have to help me, Eames, or they're gonna make me enjoy a relaxing bath in a barrel of acid!”, he had yelled, his breathing so labored Eames had thought he was on the verge of having an asthma attack.

“Hold on, I'm on my way”, had been his answer. And now he's cursing himself over and over for his lack of judgement. Because, yeah, Mannie is a friend and all - a colleague, even, for a while, since he had entered the business as a chemist and quit after four jobs, apologizing and saying that crafting illegal drugs to make people enjoy their miserable life was more fun - but he's also a stubborn git, a stubborn git that tends to traffic with very dangerous people which, of course, he never misses to underestimate.

So, now Eames is thinking he should have left him to the Chinese mafia or whatsoever. He should have said “hey, not my problem, man”, but he didn't, because he's not that kind of asshole.

_ But he should have been, oh, he should have been. _

And, Jesus Christ, his left side is bleeding so much his light blue shirt has turned dark, Mannie is freaking out and three bastards lie on the concrete floor of the made up gambling house, each one with a bullet in his head and a copious amount of grey matter missing.

_ He can't say he missed real-life crime.  _

But, eventually, Eames manages to pull himself together, make his synapses shine bright again, and asks Mannie to call someone to clean up the mess they left, which he does with unsteady, trembling fingers and an even more unsteady voice.

_ Mannie, Mannie, you've got to be prepared for backfire, if you want to be the one who shoots the first bullet,  _ he thinks and a small laugh escapes his lips.

A very bad, bad move indeed.

“Where are you going?!”, Mannie shouts, when he walks limping to the backdoor, groaning with pain.

“Calling a taxi, what do you think I'm doing? I've got places to go”, he vaguely answers, clutching at his left side and wincing.

Another bad, bad move.

“You're bleeding, Eames. You need a Jesus fuckin doctor!”

_ Oh, yeah, yes he does bloody need a doctor. _

“Got a friend in town. He's going to stitch me up.”

He tells Mannie to take care. 

There's a very good chance he's too shocked by how the night has turned out to really hear him, though.

 

***

 

The driver is a young, pimple face redhead who talks too much and gets too concerned with the blood dripping on the seats of his taxi. Eames pays him an extra three hundred dollars cash tip to make him shout his mouth. Another two because he's feeling goddamn generous, today.

When the talkative redhead drops him in front of a sturdy, tall building with a nice, easily pickable entrance door, Eames bids him goodnight and waits for him to storm away, before starting picking the door with old fashioned tools that remind him the good ol’ days before the military.

_ Before the international dream crime. _

Not a path he wants to pursue again, though. Tonight can only serve as a living proof of that.

When he's broken in, he heads to the elevators without even registering what he's doing.

_ Seventh floor, seventh floor even though he's not particularly fond of heights in general,  _ he repeats, pushing the big, white button with his clean fingers, hoping not to bleed out before the bloody rat trap reaches the seventh floor.

The rest of his  _ desperate trip  _ \- he finds it funny enough to call this a desperate trip, but he doesn't dare to laugh since he knows how bloody painful it is and thanks, but no thanks, not today Satan and shit - feels like a blur, by the way, and he barely registers the fact that when Arthur opens his door to find him slumped against it's polished wooden frame, he's actually wearing only a pair of old fashioned boxers and a tattered pajama t-shirt.

“Darling”, he merely says, his voice raspy with pain, “do you happen to have some vodka and a sewing kit?”

The last thing he remembers clearly, though, is Arthur squeaky voice while he lets out a very unarthurlike  _ “For fuck's sake, Eames!” _ , catching him just in time not to let him fall face first on the pristine floor. 

Afterwards, he drifts in and out of consciousness for the rest of the night.

 

***

 

The first time he wakes up, the first thing he notices is that the room is literally lit up like the middle of the day and that he's not - thank God, Buddha, Vishnu, The Flying Spaghetti Monster - dead.

_ Lovely news. _

He feels numb, and his mouth has ran sand-dry, but at least he's alive.

“Arthur, darling”, he croakes, not even realizing how bloody faint his voice is and Arthur merely glances at him, needle and thread mid-air, shaking his head.

“You should have seen a doctor. A real doctor, Eames. You're lucky I still had local anesthetic in my kit”, he scolds.

Eames mumbles that he  _ just  _ didn't want to answer too many questions in a casualty ward and that, besides, he's got no American health insurance anyway. 

“Do you think I won't ask any question, once you're feeling better?”

Eames shrugs or, at least, he tries to. He doesn't move a muscle, though, because Arthur is stitching him up and God knows what the hell would he do with that needle if he dares to flinch or squirm.

“Yes but I'd rather answer to yours sincerely than to theirs, lying blatantly.”

“Shut up, Eames.”

He does actually shut up. He's lying on Arthur's kitchen table as if it was a proper place where to stitch up a wound and, for a couple of minutes or so, he looks at the ceiling, so white, so clean, so Arthur.

_ He must smoke on the fire escape,  _ he thinks. Then, in a blink, he's sleeping again.

The second time Eames manages to actually wake up, he's half-seated on Arthur's couch, pillows keeping his back in place and his shirt gone, probably forever. Arthur, on the other hand, is sitting on the carpet, chin on his knees, watching an unbearably bad late night movie on the flat screen TV, occasionally sipping on a mug of filter coffee whose smell makes Eames’ stomach crave for whatever drink he can have.

“Arthur, darling”, he whispers, and Arthur tilts his long, slender neck unnaturally to look at him.

“Please, tell me that you're not babbling nonsense again”, he says sternly, but his tired eyes look more amused than pissed.

Eames cracks a smile.

“Can you please fetch me something to drink? I'm thirsty.”

Arthur gives him a court nod. When he gets back from the kitchen, Eames has fallen asleep again.

“Your water”, he whispers to his ear and, though Eames feels very, very bad for being into such a miserable state, he lets Arthur help him empty the glass in three big gulps.

“Thank you”, he then says, placing a hand on Arthur's bare forearm and feeling him shiver under his touch.  _ He shouldn't be delighted by that, given that he has lost so much blood he could fill a damned bottle, but still. Whatever thing Arthur does delights him, as always. _

“Sleep, now. I gave you painkillers, you should be okay for a couple of hours more, maybe three.”

He chuckles slightly. His hand is still on Arthur's forearm, but neither of them is going to move.

“How did you take me on the couch? I'm heavier than you”, he points out. Arthur shrugs.

“You've been surprisingly able to walk yourself, though slumped over my shoulder. And you're not that heavy, don't overestimate yourself.”

Eames closes his eyes when Arthur gently brushes his fingers against the back of his hand. He never does, unless they're engaged in a steamy session of exhausting and definitely satisfying sex, which they haven't been for a while now, because they've worked into different teams, at the opposite sides of the world, oceans, countries apart.

Still, Eames has always known where to find Arthur.

Surely, Arthur has always known where to find Eames too, even though he's too proud to admit it.

“Thank you”, he mumbles again, before his eyelids feel so heavy he can barely keep them cracked open enough to catch the glimpse of Arthur's smile in his peripheral vision.

He sleeps for a good six hours before waking up again, pain stabbing his insides each time he's not careful enough to breath as slowly as he can, taking in the smallest amount of air and exhaling it in even smaller puffs.

Arthur sleeps with his mouth agape, his neck tilted back so he can lay his head on the edge of his couch, long legs messily spread open and a soft snoring coming from his nose.

Eames considers the idea of waking him up and ask him for that magic painkiller of his, but eventually he decides he can survive some hours of excruciating pain, if that means letting Arthur get some rest after a sleepless night. Trying to put the minimum effort into it, Eames brushes away a strand of dark hair from his unmarred forehead - shouldn’t he be more wrinkly, since he’s always overthinking?

_ Couldn’t care less,  _ that’s what Eames thinks. Alongside  _ moving is not, not a good idea, roger that. _

The TV is still on, though, and there’s a lovely cuisine show running, hosted by a slender, blonde middle-aged lady who’s all smiles and candies, and Eames realizes he could use some of that coffee table glee, right now. His stomach protests - he hasn’t eaten anything since the previous afternoon - but he’s too focused on not moving a single muscle to give it a proper damn.

So he waits, patiently, biting down at his lower lip whenever the pain rips through him like another fucking stab, or a short distance bullet, until Arthur wakes up, eyes swollen and bloodshot and it’s been so long he has drawn blood from his lips.

“Hey”, he just says, massaging his stiff neck and sore shoulders one by one, fingertips digging into the firm flesh in almost a decadent fashion that could look very, very  _ sensual _ to Eames if he wasn’t battling not to set himself on fire to forget about the pain in his bloody left side. “You need painkillers”, he states, when Eames tries to speak but miserably fails, groaning instead and grimacing like a Greek tragic theatre mask.

When a needle is pushed into the bulging veins of his arm, Eames greedily welcomes the dizziness that comes with the injections of heavy doses of whichever miraculous concoction this is and even manages to let out a relieved sigh.

“How come you’ve got painkillers in the form of a solution for injection at home, dear?”, he asks, when the magic has reached for his side and, poof!, pain gone for some hours again. There’s no malice in his words, yet Arthur freezes and gives him a very eloquent glare.

_ Mind your own damn business. _

“How come you know my personal address, Eames?”

Neither of them, though, gives the other an answer.

 

***

 

On his second day stuck onto Arthur’s couch, high as a kite with painkillers, Eames tries a very awkward, very irresponsible sexual approach, for the sake of the good ol’ days in which he was intact and he and Arthur had sex in expensive hotel rooms, during jobs in which they were teamed together or surprising each others with unexpected visits.

Well, Arthur didn’t, in facts, pay Eames visits in the middle of a job, but Eames did, more frequently than he liked to admit to himself. But, eventually, he has realized he misses Arthur when they’re not together - which has happened to be the regular condition, nowadays - and then he has chosen to make up his mind and, well, wonder how screwed he is on a scale from zero to ten: eleven, probably.

However, Arthur turns him down, telling him he’s not gonna ride a recovering idiot who’s been stabbed by god-knows-who for god-knows-why, then he tells him to sleep and threatens him to mix up painkillers and Somnacin if he doesn’t shut his mouth.

Diplomacy has always, always been Arthur’s strong subject.

But, at least, Arthur’s got taste in movies and - as though he leaves his apartment to go buy some real food - he lets him enjoy some very good movies, must-see classics and indie European films as well. Truffaut, even, and Eames is pretty impressed by that.

“I thought you weren’t into movies…”, he says, when Arthur gets back home.  _ I thought you weren’t into anything that isn’t work related,  _ he implies. Arthur frowns at his statement while working fast to change his bandages and check the wound for possible infections. One cannot be sure, not even when he’s squirted half of a bottle of Betadine - a disinfectant Eames didn’t know could be purchased for a domestic use - onto Eames’ side, making it look not only wounded, but also affected by some kind of unknown yellowish alien disease.

“I thought you weren’t into anything that doesn’t involve gambling and felonies”, is his snarky remark.

“Oi, my life doesn’t revolve around cheating, darling!”

Arthur rolls his eyes. He doesn’t believe a single word, of course, because, come on, who would ever be so clueless to trust a forger to be true?

“Ah-ah”, he mutters, reapplying some kind of a medicated patch on his sewing work, his fingers brushing on Eames’ skin for a while too long before he retracts them as though he was getting burnt. “I’m sorry, the scar will look nasty as hell. I’ve never been good at sewing people up”, he says, apologetically.

Eames’ lips curl into a smile.

“Don’t feel sorry, please, you saved my life.”

He means it.

Arthur, this time, seems willing to give him the benefit of the doubt about whether he believes him or not. 

“What kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into, Eames?”

_ Arthur, Arthur, darling, do not look at me like that when you’re waiting for an explanation. Do not look at me like I owe you to be sincere. _

“Some minor misunderstandings with Chinese mob, I’m afraid”, he says, and his smile stubbornly resists, plastered on his face like a mask, a trophy and whatnot. It’s up to Arthur to tell which is which.

“Minor misunderstandings do not lead to being stabbed in the ribs with a sharp pocket knife”, he points out, giving him that obnoxious lecturing look.

“Well, let’s say this was a minor  _ money  _ misunderstanding”, Eames dismisses, hissing through his teeth when a jolt of pain prevents him from shifting to a proper seating position.

“Are you short on money? You know, you should have asked, I mean, I would have---”

He shakes his head at Arthur’s utterly puzzled face.

“Hell, no, I’ve got plenty of money, sweetheart, thank you. I was just helping a friend. Don’t worry”, he adds, “he hasn’t been stabbed, by the way.”

Arthur spends the rest of the day watching him with a weird light in his small, incredibly sweet and deep eyes.

Eames can’t understand why.

 

***

 

“I didn’t know you had  _ real  _ friends, Eames. People...people you’re willing to sacrifice for, you know”, Arthur says, pointing at the gash he himself has sutured with his fork. He has arranged dinner in the living-room, on the carpet for himself and on a tray for Eames. Light things because, literal quote  _ “I don’t want you to rip your wound open because you end up throwing up on my carpet, Eames” _ . That’s what he said when he has complained that if he would have wanted to eat hospital food, he would have gone to the E.R and let the health bureaucracy take its course.

Eames takes a sip of his chicken soup and thinks that it’s lacking on salt. On spice. On whatever bloody taste. But he would never be so mean to tell Arthur his cooking skills are shit.

“You should know me pretty well, darling, aren’t I the one who saves people’s arses on the job?”, he smirks.

“It’s not the same, Eames, stop taking me for a fool. We’re not talking about  _ work  _ here.”

The TV is still on, though it has been muted a while ago. the local news look extraordinarily catastrophic, as always, and Eames is craving for a cigarette.

Arthur would never let him smoke while he’s still unable to sit up, though.

“All right, all right. I’ve got some friends, okay? Real friends. And this, in particular, has been in the business for a while, though I don’t think you’ve ever had the chance to meet him in person, but he was one of our most talented chemists. He is, sadly, a prick, and he went back to drug crafting as soon as he had got bored with the international dream crime shit. One thing leads to another and he...let’s say he ended up being at odds with his boss. I was in town for a small-time job about a family quarrel regarding a counterfeit will and when he called me, I tried to be helpful.”

“I can only imagine how getting stabbed in the ribs can be remotely helpful, Eames.”

“Ah, I see”, Eames playfully says, “this must be the part where I tell you the  _ 'you should see the other guy’  _ line, isn't it?”

Arthur, however, is not in a playful mood. He puts down the fork with which he's absentmindedly poking at his sauteed vegetables and takes a big sip from his glass, Adam's apple rising and falling rapidly as the cold water runs down his throat.

_ Arthur, darling, that Adam's apple is very distracting _ , Eames thinks, and then scolds himself for his own lack of basic shame and decency.

“Seriously, Eames. What about the other people involved? You should be careful enough not to call for another hit on your head…”

Eames shrugs.

Soon he'll be in need for another round of painkillers.

“Bodies disposed. I trust my friend enough to know their spoils are already rotting somewhere they can't be found.”

He watches as Arthur tries to conceal a relieved sigh. He's too good at observation not to notice that, despite Arthur's efforts at packing his feelings up.

“I can...I can check it out, if you want to feel safer”, he then says, fidgeting nervously with the hem of his dark green t-shirt. Eames shakes his head.

“There's no need for you to get involved with that kind of things, darling. I won't feel safe anymore, if you did, because I'd be overworrying about you all the time”, he candidly admits. 

Arthur blushes violently and Eames thinks that he's never as beautiful as the times he gets all flustered up.

On the third day, Eames starts to feel all the bloody side effects of the painkillers and, even though standing feels like a bloody Herculean effort, taking a piss and washing feel goddamn twice as Herculean. Arthur, by the way, huffs and puffs but doesn't really complain for the whole situation. He even helps him shaving and, as much as Eames would feel aroused by the fact that  _ Arthur is really shaving his face _ in a normal situation, he feels so exposed he'd gladly get swallowed whole by the tiled floor itself.

It's a thought that lasts for a couple of seconds, though: he simply dismisses it with a very polite  _ Don't care 'bout that. _

He's injured, after all. And the stitches feel itchy and the skin pulling with each movement. Another day on the couch, watching good films, should do.

But he craves nicotine and Arthur does the same - even though admitting he's  _ addicted  _ to nicotine would mean to swallow a bitter pill, to a man like him - so he kindly agrees to let him smoke inside.

_ “Just once, Eames”,  _ he says, dryly, giving him his Arthurian look.

Smoking, Eames finds out the hard way, is another no-no, and he ends up feeling so dizzy the whole room spins around him like a bloody snow globe shaken by the hands of a drunken asshole.

He sleeps away the rest of the day, without even bothering to ask whether it's Monday, Thursday or Sunday. Who cares? He doesn't need a totem for that. He's not so paranoid.

 

***

 

On the seventh day, Arthur's proximity becomes  _ unbearable. _

Eames can now walk himself and, as though pain still gets excruciating sometimes, he doesn't need to get high on painkillers every six hours or so anymore.

So, when Arthur gets out for a morning run stating that he has neglected his well-earned off duty routine for one too many days to take care of him, Eames is all in for a good wank.

Not that his hopes for getting Arthur laid have been dashed yet, but he’s ready to swear that he’s got his needs, as though he would never consider sex a primal need:  _ well, an entire week sharing space with Arthur has turned it into a primal need indeed. _

So there he is, slowly working his hand up and down his rock-hard cock - he would even dare to call it a ‘Arthur Effect’ - ignoring the dull pain in his left side as best as he can, when the door slams open and Arthur comes in, muttering nonsense about forgotten earphones and shit.

Not that he minds having an audience when he’s getting off, though.

Arthur, however, is too smart not to recognize what he’s doing by the simple movement of his wrist, when he gets him a quick glance.

“You’re touching yourself”, he states, frowning. Eames can’t help but let out a small laugh, even though it still feels tremendously dangerous to dare such a haphazardous move.

“What can I say, you were absolutely gorgeous with that needle and thread”, he breathes out, hoping that his slightly ragged breath could at least ignite the smallest spark of arousal into Arthur’s guts.

It doesn’t, apparently.

“Jeasus, Eames, that’s gross even for some weirdo like you”, he says, before fetching his perfectly straightened earphones and making his way out, shaking his head in disbelief.

Nevertheless, Eames gets to finish up his work by recalling the many, many times they had sex all over the years and, as to stake a claim, he even manages to splash Arthur’s precious couch with cum.

He’s not one for settling for the status quo, though, and he spends the rest of the day teasing poor  _ Arthur darling  _ until he’s so done with the whole situation to ride Eames on said couch, if only to celebrate the good old days.

On the eight day, it’s Arthur’s turn to get needy and craving and Eames, even though the wound in his ribs has started to hurt again, is very, very happy to give him a round two and some sloppy, lazy kisses afterwards.

“You know, I missed you”, Arthur mutters, stifling a yawn, when they’re both finished and slumped on that fucking couch that now stinks of an odd mix of Betadine, sweat and sex and has started to take Eames’ shape, following the curves of his ass and back.

“Thought you were too uptight to admit it.”

Arthur shrugs.

“I stitched you up and watched you when I thought you could have died, so, what’s the point of being uptight?”

Eames thinks about a thousand different ways to answer that question but, deep down, he doesn’t have one at all.

“You treated me coldly enough to make me believe you would have never had sex with me anymore”, he simply states, and that’s true, because he thought about it thoroughly in the past days, while he wasn’t busy seeing unicorns and happy bees because of the painkillers. To be fair, he was more than a little bit scared ‘bout that. More than a little bit upset.

_ He knows he would literally grieve, if Arthur decided to cut him off his life once and for all. _

He has never actually sorted out what he feels about Arthur, but he  _ just _ knows that it’s not a matter of sex, nor it had never been; when they had met for the first time, they were at least ten years younger and twice as reckless, but Eames has never thought about them in mere terms of casual quickies when they bumped into each other for whatever reason.

“Oh”, Arthur says, genuinely surprised. “I never said that. What made you think I would have simply quit on having sex with you?”

Again, Eames doesn’t know how to answer.  _ Because you’re a bloody damn mystery to me,  _ would suffice as an answer but he knows better Arthur would dissect his statement bit after bit, making a philosophical quest out of a simple nine words sentence, so he goes for - as coward as it may seem - the easiest way.

“Because I’ve got a lot of imagination”, he says, curling his lips into a cunning smile.

“I wasn’t being cold, by the way. I was just...I guess that’s how I behave with uninvited guests that know the exact address of my safe house in New York City, that’s it.”

Eames goes silent for a while, his thumb lazily drawing circles on the small of Arthur’s smooth, naked back. He will never figure out how he manages to be this smooth, like a thin slip of paper that has been neatly pressed or treasured in a crystal shrine, far away from folds and dust.

“You don’t trust me”, he finally says, half a statement, half a question. He’s not pissed at that, though: he wouldn’t trust himself with his own secrets, why should someone else?

Arthur sighs, rubbing his eyes.

“I just don’t know how could you find me here. Only Dom knows this address and I’m sure he would never tell it to anyone. Not even to you, and perhaps not even if I’d give him my permission.”

“I know many things, Arthur.”

The part  _ because I care about you, and I can’t stand not knowing where you are,  _ however, remains unsaid.

Even though they’ve been fucking for a while, now, with a certain extent of exclusivity - they never talk about this but they just happen to  _ know  _ it’s true - none of them is ready to say or hear such blatant declarations of commitment.

_ Safer,  _ Eames thinks. And he’s sure that’s the same for Arthur.

“Well, I freaked out.”

“You didn’t look like someone who was freaking out.”

Arthur rests his forehead against his cheek, rough with stubble and lack of a proper skincare.

“Well, you’re not the only one who knows how to put on a facade, aren’t you?”

“I guess…”

They sleep together, at night. In Arthur’s bed, tangled in his clean sheets that smell like fresh laundry and softener. They talk about work, recent jobs, recent teams, people that had died and people that still resist, undeterred.

Eames still needs painkillers and Arthur’s insomnia doesn’t allow him to have a decent rest, but they figure it out, and the night goes smoothly well.

They've never talked this much before and, even though it's just useless pillow talk, Eames can't deny how much he likes this,  _ how easily he could get used to this. _

When morning comes, Eames convinces Arthur not to leave the bed until late afternoon and, surprisingly, Arthur lets himself get convinced pretty fast, by pretty shallow arguments at best.

_ God, how easily could he get used to this. _

They have sex a couple of times more, until Eames needs some more painkillers and Arthur passes out with his head pillowed on his chest, making the cutest moans in his sleep.

They don't talk about the reasons why they're having so many rounds, though, because there's no need to: they both know they're doing this out of a primal form of fear  _ \- fear of loss, fear of abandonment, fear of death -  _ and voicing that would be of no use at all.

_ How easily could Eames get used to Arthur's gentle weight pressed on his chest. _

 

***

 

“Are you sure you're ready to leave?”

On the twelfth day, Eames has made up his mind: he's playing a very dangerous game here, getting so used at domesticity with Arthur. He shouldn't have started it first but, as they say, there's no turning back at this point.

However, he's feeling well enough to book a decent seat on a flight to Cairo and that's exactly what he has done, at sunset, when Arthur was sleeping at his side, snoring lightly and burying his face into the pillow.

“Not at all. But I've got to”, he answers, honestly. Arthur understands.

Still, disappointment is quite visible in the way his lips flinch and his bright eyes gleam with a totally different spark.

“Do you need a ride to the airport?”

“No, thanks. A taxi would be all right.”

The usual, now familiar pet name  _ darling  _ lingers on his lips, unspoken, and has got some sort of a bitter taste.

 

Arthur has bought him a shirt, and a pair of awfully tight trousers. The belt is kindly borrowed from his disturbingly tidy closet.

Eames doesn't think he looks good dressed up like a bloody lawyer ready for a summation, but Arthur assured him he has never seen a better butt and more defined biceps than his, while wearing “ _ a bloody lawyer suit” _ .

“Where are you heading to?”

“Cairo. I need a good, warm place where to lick my wounds, I suppose. And how I like the pyramids, darling!”, he cheers, and Arthur shakes his head.

“Eames”, he calls, in a low voice. Eames frowns.

“Yes?”

For a very long moment, they both stare at each other, without daring to say a word.

_ I promise you I won't disappear _ , would be a good start. Actually, this isn't exactly a promise someone in the business can make lightheartedly, but still. It could be true, circumstances permitting.

“How...how can I find you, if I was, let's say, in time of whichever need? Like...business, I mean. But it doesn't have to be, necessarily.”

Eames cracks a faint smile.

“You know me well enough, darling. Gambling houses are my guilty pleasure. And the pyramids, of course. I could easily get hired as a tour guide, I can make up very good references”, he vaguely says and Arthur, much to his own dismay, bursts out laughing.

“I'm afraid you'd need to be more specific than that, Eames.”

_ Oh, Arthur,  _ he thinks,  _ you and your beloved specificity. _

“Well, you can use your imagination. Or make your well known thorough research, you're very good at that. And then…”

“And then what?”

“Improvise.”

Instead of kicking him in the shin, Arthur unexpectedly kisses him on the lips.

Which has never happened outside the sheets, before.

_ Improvisation. _

Now Eames feels like promising him he won't disappear. Feels like promising him they will enjoy another week or so like this, with less stitches and drama.

He doesn't, by the way. But deep down he knows, he knows that in a month or two Arthur will show up at his door, proper and pristine, beautiful in his well pressed suit, and maybe they could  _ \- they could -  _ look into the matter, make decisions, settle down.

In a month or two.

_ Some matters require patience. _

 

“Eames.”

“Yes, darling?”

“I should have let you bled out on my doormat”, Arthur says, kissing him goodbye another time, barefoot, on his threshold.

The sliding doors of the elevators have opened up and closed at least twice, since they has started saying goodbye.

But it doesn't matter, though: none of them is in a hurry, even though Eames suspects he's going to be dreadfully late for his flight.

_ Some matters, as he has said, require patience. _

  
  
  
  


  
  


  
  
  
  
  



End file.
